Richard Harding Davis
Harper’s Monthly/April, 1895
THE news of the assassination of President Carnot at Lyons reached Paris and the Café de la Paix at ten o’clock on Sunday night. What is told at the Café de la Paix is not long in traversing the length of the boulevards, and in crossing the Place de la Concorde to the cafés chantants and the public gardens in the Champs Élysées, so that by eleven o’clock on the night of the 24th of June “all Paris” was acquainted with the fact that the President of the Republic had been cruelly murdered.
There are many people in America who remember the night when President Garfield died, and how, when his death was announced from the stage of the different theatres, the audience in each theatre rose silently as one man and walked quietly out. To them the President’s death was not unexpected; it did not stun them, it came with no sudden shock, but it was not necessary to announce to them that the performance for that evening was at an end. They did not leave because the manager had rung down the curtain, but because at such a time they felt more at ease with themselves outside of a place of amusement than in one.
This was not the feeling of the Parisians when President Carnot died. On that night no lights were put out in the cafés; no leader’s bâton rapped for a sudden silence in the Jardin de Paris, and the Parisians continued to drink their bock and to dance, or to watch others dance, even though they knew that at that same moment Madame Carnot in a special train was hurrying through the night to reach the death-bed of her husband. It is never possible to tell which way the French people will jump, or how they will act at a crisis. They have no precedents of conduct; they are as likely to do the characteristic thing, which in itself is different from what people of any other nation would do under like circumstances, as the uncharacteristic thing, which is even more unexpected. They complicate history by behaving with perfect tranquility when other people would become excited, and by losing their heads when there is no occasion for it. As the Yale captain said of the Princeton team, “They keep you guessing.”
So when I was convinced by the morning papers, after the first shock of unbelief, that the President of France was dead, I walked out into the streets to see what sign there would be of it in Paris. I argued that in a city given to demonstrations the feelings of the people would take some actual and visible form; that there would be meetings in the street, rioting perhaps in the Italian quarter, and extraordinary expressions of grief in the shape of crêpe and mourning. But the people were as undisturbed and tranquil as the sun; the same men were sitting at the same round tables; the same women were shopping in the Rue de la Paix, and but for an increased energy on the part of the newsboys there was no sign that a good man had died, that one who had harmed no one had himself been cruelly harmed, and that the highest office of the state was vacant.
When I complained of this to Parisians, or to those who were Parisians by choice and not by birth, they explained it by saying that the people were stunned. “They are too shocked to act. It is a horror without a precedent,” they said; but it struck me that they were an inordinately long time in recovering from the blow. At one o’clock on Monday morning a workman crawled out upon the roof of the Invalides, and, gathering the tricolored flag in his arms, tied a wisp of crêpe about it. The flags in the Chamber of Deputies and in the War Office were draped in the same manner, and with these three exceptions I saw no other visible sign of mourning in all Paris. On Monday night those theatres subsidized by the government, and some others, but not all, were closed for that evening. At three o’clock on Tuesday, two days after the death of the President, I counted but three flags draped with crêpe on the boulevards; but on the day following all the shops on the Rue de la Paix and the hotels on the Rue de Rivoli put out flags covered with mourning, and so advertised themselves and their grief. It is interesting to remember that the most generous display of crêpe in Paris was made by an English firm of ladies’ tailors. During this time the correspondents were cabling of the grief and rage of the Parisians to sympathetic peoples all over the world; and we, in our turn, were reading in Paris the telegrams of condolence and the resolutions of sympathy from as different sources as the Parliament of Cape Town and the Congress of the United States. What effect the reading of these sincere and honest words had upon the people of Paris I do not know, but I could not at the time conceive of their reading them without blushing. I looked up from the paper which gave Lord Rosebery’s speech, and the brotherly words which came from little colonies in the Pacific, from barbarous monarchs, and from widows to Madame Carnot, and from corporations, Emperors, and Presidents to the city of Paris, and saw nothing in the countenances of the Parisians at the table next to mine but smiles of gratification at the importance that they had so suddenly attained in the eyes of the whole world.
It was also interesting to note by the Paris papers how the French valued the expressions of sympathy which poured in upon them. The fact that both Houses in the United States had adjourned to do honor to the memory of M. Carnot was not in their minds of as much importance as was the telegram from the Czar of Russia, which was given the most important place in every paper. It was followed almost invariably by the message from the German Emperor, whose telegram, it is also interesting to remember, was the second one to reach Paris after the death of the President was announced. When one reads a congratulatory telegram from the German Emperor on the result of the Cambridge-Oxford boat-race, and another of condolence to the King of Greece in reference to an earthquake, and then this one to the French people, it really seems as though the young ruler did not mean that any event of importance should take place anywhere without his having something to say concerning it. But this last telegram was well timed, and the line which said that M. Carnot had died like a soldier at his post was well chosen to please the French love of things military, and please them it did, as the Emperor knew that it would. But the condolence from the sister republic across the sea was printed at the end of the column, after those from Bulgaria and Switzerland. In the eyes of the Parisian news editor, the sympathy of the people of a great nation was not so important to his readers as the few words from an Emperor to whom they looked for help in time of war.
This was not probably true of the whole of France, but it was true of the Parisians. Two years from now Carnot’s assassination will have become history, and will impress them much more than it did at the time of his death. The next Salon will be filled with the apotheosis of Carnot, with his portrait and with pictures of his murder, and of France in mourning laying a wreath upon his tomb. His son will find quick promotion in the army, and may possibly aspire to Presidential honors, or threaten the safety of the republic with a military dictatorship. It sounds absurd now, but it is quite possible in a country where General Dodds at once became a dangerous Presidential possibility because he had conquered the Dahomans in the swamps of Africa.
Where the French will place Carnot in their history, and how they will reverence his memory, the next few years will show; but it is a fact that at the time of his death they treated him with scant consideration, and were much more impressed with the effect which their loss made upon others than with what it meant to them. It is not a pleasant thing to write about, nor is it the point of view that was taken at the time, but in writing of facts it is more interesting to report things as they happened than as they should have happened.
It is also true that those Parisians who could decently make a little money out of the nation’s loss went about doing so with an avidity that showed a thrifty mind. Almost everyone who had windows or balconies facing the line of the funeral procession offered them for rent, and advertised them vigorously by placards and through the papers; venders of knots of crêpe and emblems of mourning filled the streets with their cries. Portraits of Carnot in heavy black were hawked about by the same men who weeks before had sold ridiculous figures of him taking off his hat and bowing to an imaginary audience; the great shops removed their summer costumes from the windows and put stacks of flags bound with crêpe in their place; the flower-shops lined the sidewalks with specimens of their work in mourning-wreaths; and the papers, after their first expression of grief, proceeded to actively discuss Carnot’s successor, quoting the popularity of different candidates by giving the betting odds for and against them, as they had done the week before, when the horses were entered for the Grand Prix. This was three days after Carnot’s death, and while he was still lying unburied at the Élysée.
The French constitution provides that in such an event as that of 1893 the National Assembly shall be convened immediately to select a new President. According to this the President of the Senate, in his capacity as President of the National Assembly, decided that the two Chambers should convene for that purpose at Versailles on Wednesday, June 27th, at one o’clock. This certainly seemed to promise a scene of unusual activity, and perhaps historical importance. I knew what the election of a President meant to us at home, and I argued that if the less excitable Americans could work themselves up into such a state of frenzy that they blocked the traffic of every great city, and reddened the sky with bonfires from Boston to San Francisco, the Frenchman’s ecstasy of excitement would be a spectacle of momentous interest. This seemed to be all the more probable because to the American an election means a new Executive but for the next four years, while to the Frenchman the new state of affairs that threatened him would extend for seven. Young Howlett had a vacant place on the top of his public coach, and was just turning the corner as I came out of the hotel; so I went out with him, and looked anxiously down on each side to see the hurrying crowds pushing forward to the palace in the suburbs; and when I found that all roads did not lead to Versailles that day, I decided that it must be because we were on the wrong one, which would eventually lead us somewhere else.
It did not seem possible that the Parisians would feel so little interest as to who their new President might be that they would remain quietly in Paris while he was being elected on its outskirts. I expected to see them trooping out along the seven-mile road to Versailles in as great numbers as when they went there once before to bring a Queen back to Paris. But when we drove into Versailles the coach rattled through empty streets. There were no processions of cheering men in white hats tramping to the music of “Marching through Georgia.” No red, white, and blue umbrellas, no sky-rocket yells, no dangling badges with gold fringe, nothing that makes a Presidential convention in Chicago the sight of a lifetime. No one was shouting the name of his political club or his political favorite; no one had his handkerchief tucked inside his collar and a palm leaf in his hand; there were no brass-bands, no banners, and not even beer. Nor was there any of the excitement which surrounds the election of even a Parliamentary candidate in England. I saw no long line of sandwich-men tramping in each gutter, no violent Radicals hustling equally elated Conservatives, and crying, “Good old Smith!” or “Good old Brown!”, no women with primrose badges stuck to their persons making speeches or soliciting votes from the back of dog-carts. And nobody was engaged in throwing kippered herring or blacking the eyes of anybody else. Versailles was as unmoved as the statues in her public squares. Her broad, hospitable streets lay cool and quiet in the reflection of her yellow house-fronts, and under the heavy shadows of the double rows of elms the round, flat cobble-stones, unsoiled by hurrying footsteps, were as clean and regular as a pan of biscuit ready for the oven.
There were about six hundred Deputies in the town, who had not been there the day before, and who would leave it before the sun set that evening, but they bore themselves so modestly that their presence could not disturb the sleepy, sunny beauty of the grand old gardens and of the silent thoroughfares, and when we rattled up to the Hôtel des Réservoirs at one o’clock we made more of a disturbance with the coach-horn than had the arrival of both Chambers of Deputies. These gentlemen were at déjeuner when we arrived, and eating and drinking as leisurely and good-naturedly as though they had nothing in hand of more importance than a few calls to make or a game of cards at the club. Indeed, it looked much more as though Versailles had been invaded by a huge wedding-party than by a convention of Presidential electors. Some of the Deputies had brought their wives with them, and few as they were, they leavened and enlivened the group of black coats as the same number of women of no other nation could have done, and the men came from different tables to speak to them, to drink their health, and to pay them pretty compliments; and the good fellows of the two Chambers hustled about like so many maîtres d’hôtel seeing that such a one had a place at the crowded tables, that the salad of this one was being properly dressed, and that another had a match for his cigarette.
Besides the Deputies, there were a half-dozen young and old Parisians—those who make it a point to see everything and to be seen everywhere. They would have attended quite as willingly a fête of flowers, or a prize-fight between two English jockeys at Longchamps, and at either place they would have been as completely at home. They were typical Parisians of the highest world, to whom even the selection of a President for all France was not without its interest. With them were the diplomats, who were pretending to take the change of executive seriously, as representatives of the powers, but who were really whispering that it would probably bring back the leadership of the fashionable world to the Élysée, where it should be, and that it meant the reappearance of many royalist families in society, and the inauguration of magnificent functions, and the reopening of ballrooms long unused.
It was throughout a pretty, lazy, well-bred scene. Outside the entrance to the hotel, coachmen with the cockades of the different embassies in their hats were standing at ease in their shirtsleeves, and with their pipes between their teeth; and the gentlemen, having finished their breakfast, strolled out into the court-yard and watched the hostlers rubbing down the coach-horses, or walked up the hill to the palace, where the boy sentries were hugging their guns, and waving back the few surprised tourists who had come to look at the pictures in the historical gallery, and who did not know that the palace on that day was being used for the prologue of a new historical play.
At the gates leading to the great Court of Honor there were possibly two hundred people in all. They came from the neighboring streets, and not from Paris. None of these people spoke in tones louder than those of ordinary converse, and they speculated with indolent interest as to the outcome of the afternoon’s voting. A young man in a brown straw hat found an objection to Casimir-Perier as a candidate because he was so rich, but he withdrew his objection when an older man in a blouse pointed out that Casimir-Perier would make an excellent appearance on horseback.
“The President of France,” he said, “must be a man who can look well on a horse;” and the crowd of old women in white caps, and boy soldiers with their hands on their baggy red breeches, from the barracks across the square, nodded their heads approvingly. It was a most interesting sight when compared with the anxious, howling mob that surrounds the building in which a Presidential convention is being held at home.
It is also interesting to remember that a special telephone wire was placed in the Chamber at Versailles in order that the news of the election might be communicated to the newspaper offices in Paris, and that this piece of enterprise was considered so remarkable that it was commented upon by the entire newspaper press of that city. In Chicago, at the time of the last Presidential convention, when a nomination merely and not an election was taking place, the interest of the people justified the Western Union Telegraph Company in sending out fifteen million words from the building during the three days of the convention. Wires ran from it directly to the offices of all the principal newspapers from San Francisco to Boston, and in Chicago itself there were two hundred extra operators, and relays of horsemen galloping continually with “copy” from the convention to the main offices of the different telegraph companies.
This merely shows a difference of temperament: the American likes to know what has happened while it is hot, and to know all that has happened. The European and the Parisian, on this occasion at least, was content to wait at a café in ease and comfort until he was told the result. He did not feel that he could change that result in any way by going out to Versailles in the hot sun and cheering his candidate from the outside of an iron fence.
At the gate of the Place d’Armes there was a crowd of fifty people, watched by a few hundred more from under the shade of the trees and the awnings of the restaurants around the square. The dust rose in little eddies, and swept across the square in yellow clouds, and the people turned their backs to it and shrugged their shoulders and waited patiently. Inside of the Court of Honor a single line of lancers stood at their horses’ heads, their brass helmets flashing like the signals of a dozen heliographs. Officers with cigarettes and heavily braided sleeves strolled up and down, and took themselves much more seriously than they did the matter in hand. A dozen white-waistcoated and high-hatted Deputies standing outside of the Chamber suggested nothing more momentous or national than a meeting of a Presbyterian General Assembly. Bicyclers of both sexes swung themselves from their machines and peered curiously through the iron fence, and, seeing nothing more interesting than the fluttering pennants of the lancers, mounted their wheels again and disappeared in the clouds of dust.
In the meanwhile Casimir-Perier has been elected on the first ballot, which was taken without incident, save when one Deputy refused to announce his vote as the roll was called until he was addressed as “citizen,” and not as “monsieur.” This silly person was finally humored, and the result was declared, and Casimir-Perier left the hall to put on a dress-suit in order that he might receive the congratulations of his friends. As the first act of the new President, this must not be considered as significant of the particular man who did it, but as illustrating the point of view of his countrymen, who do not see that if the highest office in the country cannot lend sufficient dignity to the man who holds it, a dress-suit or his appearance on horseback is hardly able to do so. The congratulations last a long time, and are given so heartily and with such eloquence that the new President weeps while he grasps the hand of his late confrères, and says to each, “You must help me; I need you all.” Neither is the fact that the President wept on this occasion significant of anything but that he was laboring under much excitement, and that the temperament of the French is one easily moved. People who cannot see why a strong man should weep merely because he has become a President must remember that Casimir-Perier wears the cross of the Legion of Honor for bravery in action on the field of battle.
The congratulations come to an end at last, and the new President leaves the palace, and takes his place in the open carriage that has been waiting his pleasure these last two hours. There is a great crowd around the gate now, all Versailles having turned out to cheer him, and he can hear them crying “Vive le Président!” from far across the length of the Court of Honor.
M. Dupuy, his late rival at the polls, seats himself beside him on his left, and two officers in uniform face him from the front. Before his carriage are two open lines of cavalry, proudly conscious in their steel breastplates and with their carbines on the hip that they are to convoy the new President to Paris; and behind him, in close order, are the lancers, with their flashing brass helmets, and their pennants fluttering in the wind. The horses start forward with a sharp clatter of hoofs on the broad stones of the square, the Deputies raise their high hats, and with a jangling of steel chains and swords, and with the pennants snapping in the breeze like tiny whips, the new President starts on his triumphal ride into Paris. The colossal statues of France’s great men, from Charlemagne to Richelieu, look down upon him curiously as he whirls between them to the iron gateway and disappears in the alley of mounted men and cheering civilians. He is out of it in a moment, and has galloped on in a whirling cloud of yellow dust towards the city lying seven miles away, where, six months later, by his unexpected resignation, he is to create a consternation as intense as that which preceded his election.
It would be interesting to know of what Casimir-Perier thought as he rode through the empty streets in the cool of the summer evening, startling the villagers at their dinners, and bringing them on a run to the doors by the ringing jangle of his mounted men and the echoing hoofs. Perhaps he thought of the anarchists who might attempt his life, or of those who succeeded with the man whose place he had taken, or, what is more likely, he gave himself up to the moment, and said to himself, as each new face was framed by a window or peered through a doorway: “Yes, it is the new President of France, Casimir-Perier; not only of France, but of all her colonies. By to-night they will know in Siam, in Tunis, in Algiers, and in the swamps of Dahomey that there is a new step on the floor, and governors of provinces, and native rulers of barbarous states, and sous-préfets, and pretenders to the throne of France, will consider anxiously what the change means to them, and will be measuring their fortunes with mine.”
The carriage and its escort enter the cool shadows of the Bois de Boulogne at Passy, and pass Longchamps, where the French President annually reviews the army of France, and where now the victorias and broughams and fiacres draw to one side; and he notes the look of amused interest on the faces of their occupants as his outriders draw rapidly nearer, and the smiles of intelligence as they comprehend that it is the new President, and he catches a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of nodding faces, and hats half raised in salute as he gallops past. It must have been a pleasant drive. Very few men have taken it. Very few men have swept round the circle of the Arc de Triomphe and seen the mass of glittering carriages stretching far down the avenue part and make way for them on either side.
Casimir-Perier’s brief term included many imbitterments, but it is a question if they will ever destroy the sweetness of that moment when power first touched him as he was borne back to Paris the President of France; and in his retirement he will recall that ride in the summer twilight, which the refractory Deputies who caused his downfall have never taken, and hear again the people cheering at Versailles, and the galloping horses, and see the crowd that waited for him in the Place de la Concorde and ran beside his carriage across the bridge.
Although the funeral procession was not to leave the Élysée until ten o’clock on Sunday morning, the thrifty citizens of Paris began to prepare for it as early as eleven o’clock on Saturday night. The Champs Élysées at that hour was lined with tables, boxes, and ladders, and any other portable object that could afford from its top a view of the pageant and standing-room, for which one might reasonably ask a franc. This barricade stretched in an unbroken front, which extended far back under the trees from the Avenue Marigny to the Place de la Concorde, where it spread out over the raised sidewalks and around the fountains and islands of safety, until the square was transformed into what looked like a great market-place. It was one of the most curious sights that Parisians have ever seen in time of peace. Over four thousand people were encamped around these temporary stands, some drinking and eating, others sleeping, and others busily and noisily engaged in erecting still more stands, while the falling of the boards that were to form them rattled as they fell from the carts to the asphalt like the reports of musketry. Each stand was lit by a lantern and a smoking lamp; and the men and women, as they moved about in the half-darkness, or slept curled up beneath the carts and tables, suggested the bivouac of an army, or that part of a besieged city where the people had gathered with their household goods for safety.
The procession the next morning moved down the Champs Élysées and across the Place de la Concorde and along the Rue de Rivoli to Notre Dame, from whence, after the ceremony there, it proceeded on to the Panthéon. All of this line of march was guarded on either side by double lines of infantry, and one can obtain an idea of how great was the crowd behind them by the fact that on the morning of the procession five hundred people were taken in ambulances to the different hospitals of Paris. This included those who had fainted in the crush, or who had been overcome by the heat, or who had fallen from one of the many tottering scaffoldings. Each of the great vases along the iron fence of the Tuileries held one or two men, one of whom sat opposite us across the Rue de Rivoli, who had been there six hours, like Stylites on his pillar, except that the Parisian had an opera-glass, a morning paper, and a bottle of red wine to keep him company. The trees in the Tuileries were blackened with men, and the sky-line of every house-top moved with them. The crowd was greatest perhaps in the Place de la Concorde, where it spread a black carpet over the great square, which parted and fell away before the repeated charges of the cavalry like a piece of cloth before a pair of shears. It was a most orderly crowd, and an extremely good-humored one, and it manifested no strong feeling at any time, except over two features of the procession, which had nothing to do with the death of Carnot. Except when there was music, which was much too seldom, the crowd chattered and laughed as it might have done at a purely military function, and only the stern hisses of a few kept the majority from applauding anyone who passed for whom they held an especial interest.
The procession left the Élysée at ten o’clock, to the accompaniment of minute-guns from the battery on the pier near the Chamber of Deputies. It was led by a very fine body of cuirassiers, who presented a better appearance than any of the soldiers in the procession. It was not the great military display that had been expected; there was no artillery in line, and the navy was not represented, save by a few guards around the wreath from the officers of that particular service. The regiments of infantry, who were followed by the cavalry, lacked form, and marched as though they had not convinced themselves that what they were doing was worth doing well. The infantry was followed by the mourning-wreaths sent by the Senate and by the different monarchs of Europe. These wreaths form an important and characteristic part of the funeral of a great man in France, and as the French have studied this form of expressing their grief for some time, they produce the most magnificent and beautiful tributes, of greater proportions and in better taste than any that can be seen in any other country in the world. The larger of these wreaths were hung from great scaffoldings, supported on floats, each drawn by four or six horses. Some of these were so large that a man standing upright within them could not touch the opposite inner edges with his finger-tips. They were composed entirely of orchids or violets, with bands of purple silk stretching from side to side, and bearing the names of the senders in gold letters. The wreath sent by the Emperor of Russia was given a place by itself, and mounted magnificently on a car draped with black, and surrounded by a special guard of military and servants of the household. The wreaths of the royalties were followed by more soldiers, and then came the black and silver catafalque that bore the body of the late President. The wheels of this car were muffled with cloth, and the horses that drew it were completely hidden under trappings of black and silver; the reins were broad white ribbons, and there was a mute at each horse’s head. As the car passed, there was the first absolute silence of the morning, and many people crossed themselves, and all of the men stood bareheaded.
Separated from the catafalque by but a few rods, and walking quite alone, was the new President, Casimir-Perier. There were soldiers and attendants between him and the line of soldiers which guarded the sidewalks, but he was alone in that there was no one near him. According to the protocol he should not have been there at all, as the etiquette of this function ruled that the new President should not intrude his person upon the occasion when the position held by his predecessor is being officially recognized for the last time. Casimir-Perier, however, chose to disregard the etiquette of this protocol, arguing that the occasion was exceptional, and that no one had a better right to mourn for the late President than the man who had succeeded to the dangers and responsibilities of that office. He was also undoubtedly moved by the fact that it was generally believed that his life would be attempted if he did walk conspicuously in the procession. Had Carnot died a natural death, Casimir-Perier’s presence at the funeral would have been in debatable taste, but Carnot’s assassination, and the threats which hung thick in the air, made the President take the risk he did, in spite of the fact that Carnot had been murdered in a public place, and not on account of it.
It was distinctly a courageous thing for him to do, and it was done against the wishes of his best friends and the entreaties of his family, who spent the entire night before the procession in a chapel praying for his safety. He walked erect, with his eyes turned down, and with his hat at his side. He was in evening dress, with the crimson sash of the Legion of Honor across his breast, and he presented a fine and soldierly bearing, and made an impression, both by his appearance and by his action, that could not have been gained so soon in any other manner.
The embassies and legations followed Casimir-Perier in an irregular mass of glittering groups. All of these men were on foot. There was no exception permitted to this rule; and it was interesting to see Lord Dufferin in the uniform of a viceroy of India, which he wore instead of his diplomatic uniform, marching in the dust in the same line with the firemen and letter-carriers. The ambassadors and their attachés were undoubtedly the most brilliant and picturesque features of the occasion, and the United States ambassador and his secretaries were, on account of the contrast their black-and-white evening dress made to the colors and ribbons of the others, on this occasion, the most conspicuous and appropriately dressed men present.
But what best pleased the French people were two girls dressed in the native costumes of Alsace and Lorraine. They headed the deputation from those provinces. The girl who represented Alsace was particularly beautiful, with long black hair parted in the middle, and hanging down her back in long plaits. She wore the characteristic head-dress of the Alsacian women, and a short red skirt, black velvet bodice, and black stockings. She carried the French flag in front of her draped in crêpe, and as she stepped briskly forward the wind blew the black bow on her hair and the folds of the flag about her face, and gave her a living and spirited air that in no way suited the occasion, but which delighted the populace. They applauded her and her companion from one end of the march to the other, and the spectacle must have rendered the German ambassador somewhat uncomfortable, and made him wish for a billet among a people who could learn to forget. The only other feature of the procession which called forth applause, which no one tried to suppress, was the presence in it of an old general who was mistaken by the spectators for Marshal Canrobert. This last of the marshals of France was too ill to march in the funeral cortége; but the old soldier, who looked not unlike him, and whose limping gait and bent back and crutch-stick led him to be mistaken for the marshal, served the purpose quite as well. One wondered if it did not embarrass the veteran to find himself so suddenly elevated into the rôle of popular idol of the hour; but perhaps he persuaded himself that it was his white hair and crutch and many war-medals which called forth the ovation, and that he deserved it on his own account—as who can say he did not?
The unpleasant incident of the day was one which was unfortunately acted in full view of the balconies of the hotels Meurice and Continental. These were occupied by most of the foreigners visiting Paris, and were virtually the grandstands of the spectacle.
In the Rue Castiglione, which separated the two hotels, and in full sight of these critical onlookers, a horse was taken with the blind staggers, and upset a stand, throwing those who sat upon it out into the street. In an instant the crash of the falling timbers and the cries of the half-dozen men and women who had been precipitated into the street struck panic into the crowd of sight-seers on the pavement and among the firemen who were at that moment marching past. The terror of another dynamite outrage was in the minds of all, and without waiting to learn what had happened, or to even look, the thousands of people broke into a confused mass of screaming, terrified creatures, running madly in every direction, and changing the quiet solemnity of the moment into a scene of horror and panic. The firemen dropped the wreath they were carrying and fled with the crowd; and then the French soldiers who were lining the pavements, to the astonishment and disgust of the Americans and English on the balconies, who were looking down like spectators at a play, tucked their guns under their arms and joined in the mad rush for safety. It was a sight that made even the women on the balconies keep silence in shame for them. It was pathetic, ridiculous, and inexcusable, and the boy officers on duty would have gained the sympathy of the unwilling spectators had they cut their men down with their swords, and shown the others that he who runs away from a falling grandstand is not needed to live to fight a German army later. It is true that the men who ran away were only boys fresh from the provinces, with dull minds filled with the fear of what an anarchist might do; but it showed a lack of discipline that should have made the directors of the Salon turn the military pictures in that gallery to the wall, until the picture exhibited in the Rue Castiglione was effaced from the minds of the visiting strangers. Imagine a squad of New York policemen running away from a horse with the blind staggers, and not, on the contrary, seizing the chance to club everyone within reach back to the sidewalk! Remember the London bobby who carried a dynamite bomb in his hand from the hall of the Houses of Parliament, and the Chicago police who walked into a real anarchist mob over the bodies of their comrades, and who answered the terrifying bombs with the popping of their revolvers! It is surprising that Napoleon, looking down upon the scene in the Rue Castiglione from the top of his column, did not turn on his pedestal.
After such an exhibition as this it was only natural that the people should turn from the soldiers to find the greater interest in the miles of wreaths that came from every corner of France. These were the expressions of the truer sympathy with the dead President, and there seemed to be more sentiment and real regret in the little black bead wreaths from the villages in the south and west of France than there were in all the great wreaths of orchids and violets purchased on the boulevards.
The procession had been two hours in passing a given point. It had moved at ten o’clock, and it was four in the afternoon before it dispersed at the Panthéon, and Deputies in evening dress and attachés in uniform and judges in scarlet robes could be seen hurrying over Paris in fiacres, faint and hot and cross, for the first taste of food and drink that had touched their lips since early morning. A few hours later there was not a soldier out of his barracks, the scaffoldings had been taken to pieces, the spectators had been distributed in trains to the environs, the bands played again in the gardens, and the theatres opened their doors. Paris had taken off her mourning, and fallen back into her interrupted routine of pleasure, and had left nothing in the streets to show that Carnot’s body had passed over them save thousands of scraps of greasy newspapers in which the sympathetic spectators of the solemn function had wrapped their breakfasts.
The Archive 